Mallory Moe is a veteran Army mechanic in her mid-twenties. She lives with her girlfriend Andrea and works the overnight shift at her local gas station. While she’s figuring out how she wants to spend the rest of her life, the country is on lockdown and she struggles with confinement in their cabin. It doesn’t help that she has a hypersensitivity to sound as a result of her childhood trauma. And when Andrea’s behavior begins to turn quite toxic, Mallory experiences flashbacks to her troubling past. After an especially troubling altercation, Mallory escapes on a dog walk and encounters Shay, an injured teenager who needs help. A Winter’s Rime by Carol Dunbar follows Mallory’s journey in her attempt to save a girl not unlike her own teenage self, which catapults her own path to healing and forgiveness.

Dunbar creates a powerful and sympathetic protagonist with Mallory in A Winter’s Rime. The more I got to know Mallory, the more invested I was in her success in overcoming her childhood trauma and reconnecting with who she used to be. All the characters were compelling and fully-developed. I appreciated her coworker Noah, who has Asperger’s, for his honesty and allowing Mallory to achieve the personal growth she needs. And even though I hated Andrea and her incredibly evil treatment of Mallory, readers might find a way to empathize with her through Mallory’s perspective by the end of the novel. As a warning to readers, content triggers include alcoholism, domestic abuse, sexual assault, human trafficking, generational trauma, and death. If readers can handle the dark moments of the story, reaching the healing part of Mallory’s journey becomes that much more rewarding.

I wasn’t familiar with the term rime before reading this book. After consulting a dictionary, I found that rime is a type of frost that occurs from fog that cools on exposed objects. This title perfectly fits the story. The main character, Mallory, is frosty. She has a cold personality due to events in her life. She is ex-military and lives in a somewhat remote area of Wisconsin. The book centers around her interactions with the limited number of people in her life.

This is the second book I have read by this author. What I enjoy most about her writing is the way she describes nature. She is very skilled in making you feel a part of the Wisconsin cold and forest. What I did not enjoy about this book is that there were parts where there seemed to be no purpose in dialogue or actions of the characters which caused the book to drag.

I received an electronic copy of the book from Kaye Publicity via Netgalley.

(𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘵𝘰 @𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 #𝘨𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬.) 𝗔 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥’𝗦 𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘 is the second book I’ve read by Carol Dunbar in a little less than a year. The first was her debut, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘵 𝘉𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘜𝘴, which I read last October and absolutely loved. In fact, it was one of my top debuts of 2022. That puts Dunbar’s sophomore novel in a difficult position. It has big shoes to fill. And did it? For me, not really.⁣
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It’s not fair to compare the two books, but it’s also almost impossible not to with them being released only a year apart. I think my bottom line is that I just found the characters, overall, more sympathetic and more compelling in her debut. This was especially true of the main characters. In 𝘈 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘙𝘪𝘮𝘦 25-year old Mallory is a vet with lots of issues relating to her childhood. She’s trying to figure out her future by coming to understand her past. While this is a setup that often works for me, here I couldn’t stop comparing Mallory’s situation to that of Elsa, a young mother trying to make it living off-the-grid in rural Wisconsin, in the debut. I just preferred Elsa’s story. It’s as simple as that. Would I have liked 𝘈 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘙𝘪𝘮𝘦 more if I hadn’t read 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘵 𝘉𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘜𝘴? Maybe, but I did read it and there’s no going back on that! ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

I read the first couple of chapters before deciding that I don't like the writing. It's repetitive and boring. I do think that the premise is interesting, so if you can get past the writing, I'd recommend it.

I loved Carol Dunbar's debut novel, The Net Beneath Us, and wanted to see where she went with her sophomore novel, A Winter's Rime. A Winter's Rime is very different than her last book. This one focuses on a female protagonist with unresolved trauma that has led her to the mundane and lonely life she currently lives, as well as an abusive relationship she has out of convenience. I had a hard time tracking where this book was going because the synopsis focuses on the main character, Mallory, finding a lost girl in the woods. That ends up being a small part of the story and it is more a character study of Mallory and the PTSD she suffers from and eventually acknowledges. I liked the concept, but I felt the execution could have been better.

A thoughtful and beautifully written novel that moves back and forth in time to tell the story of a woman struggling to overcome trauma and to find herself. Mallory is living in an unsatisfying and difficult way with Andrea in the Wisconsin woods and working as a guest services lead at a gas station/grocery store. She's got a talking relationship with a man who lives nearby- a relationship which enrages Andrea. One night, having come home from work and out walking the dog, she comes upon a teen girl wearing almost nothing but her beaten face and this changes everything. Mallory's back story comes out slowly (and if I have a quibble it's that her timeline is a tad confusing and doesn't seem to quite work in concert with her sister's). She's a terrific character (I liked her synesthesia) with a strong sense of right and wrong, as is Noah, her coworker (who sees her in ways others don't). And you'll root for Mallory, Shay, and Noah. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. It's an interesting read that will surprise you at several turns - highly recommend.

Mallory Moe has survived a childhood filled with violence. She now lives in the woods of Wisconsin, working at a gas station and barely making it by. She finds a girl on the side of the road who is experiencing horrible trauma, and all of her own past traumas come flooding back. Will she be able to face her trauma and come out the other side.

Being from Wisconsin, I totally recognized the Speed Stop in the novel as really the Kwik Trips around the state.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.